Why we all
love Bridget Jones
By Ian Watson Director
Beeban Kidron gets her feet up on the couch and explains what makes the
Jones girl so interesting. WHETHER
you care to admit it or not, an inner Bridget Jones lurks within each of
us. She lies waiting, oversize glass of Chardonnay and half-smoked fag
in hand, waiting to wreak merry, farcical havoc at the most inopportune
moment. All she needs is the right catalyst, the subconscious trigger
that shatters your carefully constructed social mores and ties your
shoelaces together while you aren't looking. For Beeban Kidron, the
director of our girl's second foray into amiable cinematic chaos,
Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, that catalyst is a certain parlour
game (clue: one word, two syllables). "I'd rather not spend the weekend
with someone than be put on the spot and have to play charades," laughs
the 43-year-old, best known for the 1990 TV adaptation of Oranges Are
Not The Only Fruit and documentary feature Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps And
Their Johns. "Scrabble, the same. So many things." "You
walk in a room and think 'Is tonight the night I'm going to say the most
stupid thing and everyone's going to look at me like I'm an idiot?' I'm
not an idiot, but between my expectation of myself – where I say the
cleverest, wittiest, most insightful thing – and the reality, where I
just dribble on like everybody else, is my place of failure. That what I'm
interested in and that's my analysis of why people love Bridget." The
first film, Bridget Jones's Diary, came out in 2001 and ended with the
bumbling singleton staggering into the arms of Mark Darcy (Colin Firth).
Since then, much has happened to the actress who portrays her, Renée
Zellweger. She picked up a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Cold
Mountain and found her own Darcy in the form of Jack White of The White
Stripes. In Bridgetworld, however, a mere six weeks (and, as Bridget
crows at the beginning of the film, "71 ecstatic shags") have elapsed.
And although her circumstances have changed, she's still the same old,
gloriously unwaiflike Bridget. While
weight was a daily issue for Bridget in the first film, in the
follow-up, it seems as if she's given up the struggle and admitted she's
fat and always will be. Kidron sees it all as development of the
character. "We were trying to grow her up a bit," she nods. "When you're
single, you're obsessed in a very individualistic way. As someone in a
new relationship, you're very obsessed about the relationship. So in the
first movie, she does a lot of damage to her own self-image. In the
second movie, she does a lot of damage to the relationship. Through our
lives, our issues change, but our personality does not." The
central question of the second film is: what happens after the happy
ending? How do you cope with having a real-life Prince Charming
slumbering in your bed? In Bridget's case, it seems to be with a lot of
dewy-eyed staring. "The staring thing gets such a huge laugh in the
cinema," says Kidron. "Because people so understand all the longing and
the unspoken emotion. Women drown themselves in the early part of the
relationship to the point where they don't recognise themselves, and
then they attack the thing they've fought to have." It's
not long before the obsessive nature of Bridget's relationship with
Darcy spills over into jealousy – of Darcy's younger, more elegant
colleague Rebecca. (Or as Bridget puts it: "Only 22, legs up to there
and Daddy owns half of Scotland.") To
compound matters, it becomes clear during their many arguments about
everything from social justice to schooling that Bridget and Darcy
hardly have anything in common. You can't help but wonder why they're
together. "When
you look at the couples whose relationships work, it is a complete
mystery," Kidron says. "There are people who theoretically should be
getting on brilliantly and don't. And there are people who apparently
have nothing in common who are tight." "Darcy
assumes many of the certainties of his class, his education, his gender.
And she is flailing around and assuming absolutely nothing. So she finds
that fantastically attractive. And then oppressive, which is her
journey. He, meanwhile, finds his own self stiff, unyielding, not
spontaneous; bound by the norms of the society in which he's grown up.
And she seems brilliant and dastardly and glorious." Nevertheless,
apart from a take-off of The Sound Of Music at the start of the film,
with Darcy and Bridget running towards each other in slow motion, we don't
actually see the couple enjoying their relationship. She's irrational;
he forgives her. She's irrational again; he forgives her again. "I
did shoot more of them getting on," Kidron admits, "and there's nothing
more dull. There's a scene that will be on the DVD about them going to
the cinema and she's late. He says 'I've been waiting to see this film
for 11 years and it's the last showing tonight' and off they go for
pizza and a shag. I totally knew that moment." But
once again, he's forgiving her. It would have been nice to have seen an
instance of her giving something back, of her opening up that stiffness.
When Darcy invited Bridget to an important function, she is keen to
impress but true to form fails spectacularly. Darcy's reaction,
meanwhile, is typically repressed. "He gets annoyed at the Law Council
dinner, but he gets annoyed in a Darcy way," says Kidron. "The thing is,
if he could just say: 'There is appropriate behaviour and there's
inappropriate behaviour and you let me down by coming in with your
make-up all over your face and being rude to my friends'. If he'd have
been a person who could have said all that, it would have been a
different movie. It is also about his failings as well as hers." Kidron's
right, of course. My annoyance is actually with Darcy – for not being
able to express himself fully or conduct their relationship on an equal
footing (as a friend rather than the stereo typical "provider"). Such is
my dissatisfaction with Darcy that when Daniel Cleaver, pitched
brilliantly again by Hugh Grant, reappears and starts displaying genuine
charm and warmth – albeit for inevitably dubious reasons (the phrase "weekend
shagathon" sticks in the mind) – I'm on the side of the devil. But
rather than having a typically male response, Kidron says I've mirrored
Bridget's feelings and frustrations. "That's
what Bridget feels. Exactly. 'Loosen up, you bastard. Give me a good
time'. It is about the female experience. "This
is a film from that perspective. And that's what makes it interesting
because that's the film you don't usually get. You get the pretty boy
meets the pretty girl and they theoretically don't get on over a lot of
spurious issues and then they make up in the rain. Here you have a much
more complex landscape. It's about class and aspiration and lack of
perfection." The
ultimate thing to remember, Kidron says, about the way she's handled
Bridget and Darcy's relationship, is that it's a romantic comedy. It
doesn't need to be realistic. "It
is supposed to be, I don't want to say parody, but it's six inches above
reality," Kidron concedes. "If you want reality TV, it's all there. You
go to the movies for distillation of experience." Most
comedies of this type end in a marriage, but Kidron manages to employ
the cliché without having to surrender to it. "The film's actually
about relationships and commitment," she says. "Bridget goes off on this
mad comic journey and comes back and says to Darcy 'I'll have you the
way you are. We are imperfect creatures and we'll find a way together
and it won't be easy'. Which is where you come to in a healthy
relationship." And the future for Bridget? "It all rests with Helen Fielding," she smiles. "I find it absolutely fascinating that Helen had a child this summer." Bridget knee deep in nappies and baby sick? What a v v good idea.
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